Dracophile
Dracophile (formerly known as RFS) is a former Miniclip employee who served as the lead administrator of the Miniclip Forums from 2006-2009, and was the creator and lead administrator of the Miniclip Club Penguin Forums from 2007-2011. Prior to this, Draco had served briefly as a volunteer moderator on the Miniclip Forums before his knowledge of vBulletin caught the company's eye and he was offered a paid admin role on the Miniclip Forums and later MCCP. When Draco was fired from his position in 2011 following departmental retructuring within the company, he left the forums and hasn't returned since. Regular Member (2004-2006) Dracophile joined the Miniclip Forums in November 2004 under the name RFS. A fan of the game Robot Rage, he mostly hung out in that forum, before being issued an extensive ban by AmberMouse following a number of trolling incidents. He was encouraged to return to the forums in September 2005 by his friend KABOOM EVERYTHING. A handful of users from Draco's own website, RFSHQ.com, also joined, including Chz and deverger. This time around, Dracophile ventured into other areas of the board, such as the general and console games categories, and quickly emerging as a well known and popular member within the wider community. His propensity for sarcasm and trolling had not diminished, and he frequently cut down and mocked members whom he deemed to be behaving immaturely or talking nonsense (i.e. about upcoming games and consoles), to the amusement of those not in the firing line. Dracophile had spent time on the Something Awful forum, where you had to pay to be a member and discussions were generally quite stimulating while immature of childish behaviour wasn't tolerated. It annoyed Draco that by comparison, the Miniclip forums were full of young teenagers spamming and posting one-word replies, and the small moderation team led by AmberMouse was doing nothing about it, thus impacting on the quality of the discussions and the overall enjoyment of the forum. Tetsumonchi, one of Draco's new friends since returning, shared his view that the forum shouldn't be used a chat room, and spammers should be "encouraged" to change their ways. Controversial methods of backseat moderating were used to achieve this, such as calling spammers out, humiliating then or chastising them. AmberMouse knew of this and seemingly condoned it, while Draco and Tetsu also received back-up from other veteran members. Dracophile was nominated for Member of the Year in 2005, along with The Cheat, KABOOM EVERYTHING and Tripacer99, but lost out to Tetsumonchi. In February 2006, AmberMouse issued a short ban to Dracophile and Vandappetal after a heated argument broke out between the pair. The following month, Club Penguin was reseased on Miniclip - a game which, unbeknown to Draco at the time, was to shape and dominate the next 5 years of his life within the community. In April, Tetsumonchi had his account stolen by StormierZiggy, prompting Draco and others to attack Ziggy on the forum and demanding that he be banned and Tetsu's account be restored. Draco even offered to help break into Ziggy's invision board to look for evidence, however the situation was eventually resolved peacefully with Ziggy being banned and Tetsu regaining control of his account. By late April, activity within the Club Penguin forum had started to swell as the game's popularity increased and more people registered. The Club Penguin players, or "Penguins" as they came to be known, were predominately in their early teens or younger, and for most this was the first forum they had ever joined. They generated a huge amount of spam within their own forum, before pouring out into other sections of the Miniclip Forums and annoying much of the mainstream community who regarded their posts as immature, off-topic and spam. AmberMouse and her moderators seemed unwilling to get involved with Club Penguin, so Draco spearheaded a small team comprised of himself, Tetsu, Heli_Attack_Kid and other veteran members who entered the Club Penguin forum and initiated a sort of backseat moderating campaign, hoping to improve and fix the penguin community from within. Dracophile wrote a series of guides and rules, which he then asked the moderators to sticky. For over two weeks the team also tirelessly attempted to answer questions, offer advice, end disputes and keep the peace when a troll would attack. Their involvement ultimately had little effect, but was seen as the first small step towards an organized Club Penguin forum.